It has been a remarkably mild winter, in Sandy Eggo.
Fallon, Nevada, we are reminded, is not Sandy Eggo.
Also! I’ve a 0515 brief this morning, followed by a 0700 launch. Two flights today, the second lands at 1600 or so.
I remembered something of a love/hate relationship with the halls of the (prestigious) Navy Fighter Weapons School.
This morning at 1415 0415 (only this crewe would critique an error made at 0430), I began to remember why.
It may be cold and dark, but doesn’t the jet fly better? I still remember the first time I had a training hop on a cold morning during basic jet at Kingsville. The T-2 had a lot more spring in it’s step when the weather was brisk. Had to keep bringing the nose up and up on takeoff to maintain the approved climbout speed. Felt strange to be pointing that high.
George V.
CAP,
Here in Boston, we have benefited from an incredibly warm & snowless winter. Temps have been in the 50s for most days in January and February although it still gets damn cold at night. If this is the outcome of ” Global ( Fraud ) Warming, I heartily endorse whatever would make this our ” new normal “….Maybe it was me driving my 1963 Willys Jeep with little or no pollution control…..Guess I have to get the old girl out of the garage a little more often, eh?
Meanwhile back at BAGRAM in AFGHN, they have been dealing with the coldest & snowiest winter in the past 15 years. My residence there was a plywood shack w/o insulation and very little A/C or heat…..Guess I got out of there just in time…
Morning at 1415. Is that Zulu?
He has his watch set to Tokyo time.
…that rogue “1″ at the beginning of the time call is guaranteed to mess you up every time.Best
Y’all cut him some slack. The mild winter has hit him hard.
I figured our esteemed host was doing the usual “sleep until your hungry” aviator trick, and decided to get up at the crack of noon.
Yeah, but its a Dry cold!!
BT: Jimmy T sends.
My cousin in Cobourg, Ont, tells me its 6 Celcius!! Call that a winter?? We even had a minus 10C in Norfolk, UK. Oi, China, Stop messing with our weather.
Yowsers….reminds me of Kodiak. Some fisherman on a crab boat with appendicitis, the SAR alarm sounds and the wind is blowin’ 25 knots at best with heavy snow showers and the kind of cold that chills your bones. The flight mechanic opens the door and that 25-degree air whooshes into the cockpit and drains all of the warmth in your body. Your teeth chatter like a typewriter at the disposal of a crackhead. I don’t miss those days at all.
And to think we’ve had such a warm winter down south. I haven’t worn a jacket in weeks down here. And to think the one Mardi Gras parade I went to was 30 degrees. Figures…
I’m going to exhale double the amount of Co2 I exhale. If this is the new normal, I like it. If we follow the Greenies’ logic, I’d like to keep it that way.
Hey, is that a J-79 I hear turning out on the ramp, or simply a fighter pilot whining about his miserable lot in life?
A relatively snow-less winter has us now shoveling out from a weekend dump in time for blizzard warning starting tonight. And I don’t get to go flying, the mighty plastic-plane being sans FIKI and an ice magnet of startling proportions.
Be careful on the initial taxi out of the chocks as there might be more than a few folks staying warm by standing in yer exhaust. BTDT.
MikeyB
Toasty Toast RAN FAA Maintainer Cartoonie:
http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l261/SpazSinbad/A4standEasyDeckCartoonNavyNews8sep1.gif
Ah, the joys of cold weather. 19 here In NE Oregon got
a short Ot trip in the ol Pontiac. However this late in the
winter now see the Fallon isn’t much different than ours.
-supposed to push 60f later in the week…
Yup. The High Desert gets mighty cold, don’t it?
-5 at Tollgate Mtn 5500 ft and 25 miles from here this AM.
-2 at Meacham on I-84 over the Blue Mtns of NE Oregon.
I’m driving that way today..
could be worse -25 isn’t unusual.
I’d rag on you, Lex, about that time thing if I didn’t do it so often myself.
Paul
New England has had a very non-winter winter. So strange however this week’s temps do echo the Fallon report above. That said it’s due to change in the next 48 hours. 3 inches of snow overnight tomorrow followed by the ever-delightful wintery mix on Thursday. Will make the commute interesting. Thank goodness for the Jeep Grand Cherokee with 4WD.
I always wanted a vanity plate for the Jeep; picture this: the environmental plate design with “GUZZLR”. Classic.
My Jeep has a bumper sticker that has the recycling triangle on it and says “This car runs 100% on recycled dinosaur…”
Ha! Love it.
If we ever get my lovely wife the truck she really wants, it’ll have a license plate frame that says, “There’s more to life than gas mileage…”
Gee, if only the Navy had an airbase closer to San Diego, that could support a Fighter Weapons School………
Well, they gave Miramar to the Marines, but North Island would do nicely. Yah, in my dreams.
My favourite bumper sticker was one I saw in Oxford Street, 30 years ago: “Caution, Convicted Arab Shoplifter – No Hand Signals” – those were the days; now they OWN Oxford Street.
Hogday – My two favorite bumper stickers from the Southeast Expressway heading into Boston
1. ” Keep Honking your horn – I’m reloading”
2. ” The voices in my head told me to go home & clean the guns.”
As you can imagine, neither of these cars had issues with other cars in traffic.
Sorry about the change in UK’s makeup as you are fast approaching becoming part of ” Eurabia”
Not the England you remember as a lad I’d bet.
When I see those here in the liberal wasteland, it gives me hope.
SK1; To the untrained eye, the old place doesn’t actually LOOK like an old bazaar in Cairo or a black hole of Jalalabad, or a Romanian campsite, or a Ukrainian fleamarket (tho’ Zane might take me up on that one). Where I live it’s very much the quintessential English countryside with beautiful cottages and those rural vistas that got Constable painting, but on the whole, it depends where you are standing when you look. There are places in some of our cities where I would most def not want to venture and parts of my own capital where I felt less safe than when I was once given a look-see in a Detroit police car.
Ah those brisk high desert mornings, walking to high school, how I remember them. Enough to make a man join the Navy and seek orders in other than northern locations.
Which I did.
Of course, there are all those trips to rough northern seas, but at least I wasn’t shoveling snow the day after the boat pulled in. Ying, yang.
If one scrolls down to the Lee Vining picture, the view is looking NE. I believe our dear friend Lex, is working in those skys!
http://www.tranquilityimages.com/cams.shtml
“working”
The Son&Heir is just back from a month at Fallon — his first taste of the high life in the high desert. 12F nights on the flightline not so good for potting panels.
Unpossible!
That iPhone has 5 bars AND a full battery.
SAR beeper went off at Fallon one February day in the 80s. Called Ops to see what the hey. They said to air taxi over to the Fleet hangar and pick up our brief. When we got there, there was a very downcast Marine electric A-6 crew to meet us. Seems they had blown off a cold weather brief and their CO didn’t cotton to it. So he put them on the schedule the next day for what they thought was a flight. It was, in the back of the SAR bird up to the Stillwaters for about 8 hours of impromptu survival school wearing only what they showed up to the “brief” in. They looked even more downcast when we went back to pick them up. Heh.
Not a teachable moment, but teachable hours. Hopefully they brought fire making supplies with them.
25 at 4 in the morning? Kinda warm, donthca think? Probably hit high 40s.
That is like a 2 fleece day. Maybe if it is windy you throw on the jacket over the fleece.
There was snow on the tops of the low hills on southern edge of Temecula, CA this morning. Quite unusual.